Release Date: January 31, 2000 Developer: Westwood Studios
Get It On: GOG
Back in the year 2000, if you weren’t clicking your mouse into oblivion playing Diablo II, you were probably missing out on one of the slickest, most experimental action-RPGs ever made. Westwood Studios, the legends behind Command & Conquer, decided to take a break from tanks and Teslas to give us Nox. While it was often dismissed as a “Diablo clone,” anyone who actually played it knows that’s like calling a Ferrari a clone of a Ford just because they both have four wheels. Nox was faster, weirder, and arguably way more creative.
A Hero in Sneakers
The story kicks off with a vibe that feels more like a Saturday morning cartoon than a grimdark fantasy. You play as Jack, an ordinary guy living in a trailer park who gets sucked through his TV into a magical world because an evil sorceress named Hecubah needs a legendary orb that happens to be acting as Jack’s paperweight. It’s a classic “fish out of water” setup that keeps the tone light and humorous, a refreshing change from the self-serious doom and gloom of most RPGs from that era.
Choose Your Chaos
What really made Nox special was how it handled its three character classes: the Warrior, the Wizard, and the Conjurer. Unlike other games where classes just mean different stats, in Nox, they changed the entire experience. The Warrior was all about brute force and tactical movement, using abilities like the Berserker Charge to slam into enemies. The Wizard was a glass cannon with a massive spellbook of creative hexes, and the Conjurer was this weird, awesome hybrid that could charm monsters to fight for him and use bows. Each class even had its own unique starting path and specific levels, giving you a legitimate reason to play through the campaign three times.
TrueSight and Moving Parts
Technically, Nox was doing things its peers wouldn’t touch. The TrueSight system was a game-changer; instead of a generic “fog of war,” your vision was physically blocked by walls, pillars, and corners. If a necromancer was hiding behind a pillar, you literally couldn’t see him until you walked around it. It turned every dungeon crawl into a tense, tactical encounter. Plus, the world was surprisingly interactive. You could push boulders to crush enemies, move furniture to block doorways, and set off complex chain reactions. It felt like a living, physical space rather than just a flat map.
The Fast and the Frantic
If you ever hopped into the multiplayer, you know that Nox was basically an overhead shooter masquerading as an RPG. It was fast—lightning fast. Between the Capture the Flag mode and the chaotic Arena battles, the game demanded Twitch-reflexes. Wizards would set magical traps, Warriors would hunt them down with Harpoons, and Conjurers would flood the screen with summoned beasts. It was a beautiful, balanced mess that still has a cult following today via projects like OpenNox.
The Legacy of a Hidden Gem
It’s a bit of a tragedy that Nox didn’t get the franchise treatment it deserved, mostly because it launched right alongside the behemoth that was Diablo II. But as a standalone experience, it remains a hidden gem that holds up surprisingly well. The art is colorful, the voice acting is endearingly campy, and the gameplay loop is tight. If you’re looking for an ARPG that values skill and creativity over endless stat-grinding, you owe it to yourself to track down a copy on GOG.
Bringing Nox into the Modern Age with OpenNox
If you try to run the original Nox on a modern rig, you might run into some “retro” headaches like screen flickering or frame rate stutters. This is where OpenNox saves the day. It’s a brilliant, community-driven open-source engine that essentially rewrites the game’s heart to play nice with Windows 10, Windows 11, and even Linux. It’s not just a compatibility patch; it adds high-resolution support (hello, 4K spell-slinging!), fixes ancient bugs, and introduces manual spell casting so you can feel like a true wizard by binding gestures to keys. It even breathes new life into the multiplayer scene by making it way easier to host and join games without messing with your router settings for three hours.
Final Score: 8/10 – Great
Ready to Play?
You can grab the latest stable build of OpenNox directly from their official development hub:
Pro Tip: Keep in mind that OpenNox is an engine, not the game files themselves. You’ll still need a legal copy of the original game (the GOG version is the easiest to use) for it to pull the maps and art from.
